Eric its funny how you seem to do all of my favorite records from these artist and a few I never really liked until you worked with them. You don't really have a heavy hand in a trade mark sound where I know you produced it from first listen. If you do its that I know I love how the artist sounds and that the record is great. This is over a pretty wide range of genres. My hat off to you.

Anyway, When I heard you worked on Nickel Creek's record I was dying to hear it. Again you seemed to pull the most out of the band performances, arrangements and sonics. Specially sonically. Can you give us some back ground on how you came to work with Nickel creek and what kind of things they had hoped for with "Why Should The Fire Die" and you as producer. Any insight on making this record would also be great. Another great record!

Eric its funny how you seem to do all of my favorite records from these artist and a few I never really liked until you worked with them. You don't really have a heavy hand in a trade mark sound where I know you produced it from first listen. If you do its that I know I love how the artist sounds and that the record is great. This is over a pretty wide range of genres. My hat off to you.

Anyway, When I heard you worked on Nickel Creek's record I was dying to hear it. Again you seemed to pull the most out of the band performances, arrangements and sonics. Specially sonically. Can you give us some back ground on how you came to work with Nickel creek and what kind of things they had hoped for with "Why Should The Fire Die" and you as producer. Any insight on making this record would also be great. Another great record!

There was a thread started a while ago about the WSTFD record. I am not sure why it didn't get pulled into this Q&A. Here is the link. There is good over all description of my experience working on the record. If there are any additional questions you have I'll be happy answer those as well.

In the thread you linked above, you mentioned recording the violin. Could you explain how you set up the pair of Coles 4038s for the violin?

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge!

Ryan

I experimented with a few different things. I think the approach that ended up being the best was having one mic more in front of the instrument pointed towards the sound holes/bowing of the strings. I do like to have that mic a bit off axis though. Placing the mic directly in front of the sound holes seems to accentuate some of the resonances that cause the instrument to sound unbalanced. the other mic is a little further away behind the player to get a more diffused perspective. I pan that second mic opposite the main one and have it down in volume a bit. It allows me to widen the sound a bit but still have the violin come from a specific place in the mix.